American Actor

Movie stars are revered for their ability to captivate audiences, and perhaps no actor has done it as well as Cary Grant, the epitome of the suave, debonair actor who may have been rivaled only by dancer extraordinaire Fred Astaire. Grant offered a version of the male actor that stood in stark contrast with the gangster heroes and hard-boiled film noir detectives that populated the screen throughout his career.

Kitty Carlisle surely stands as one of the most recognizable figures of the 20th century, but unlike major actors, actresses, and other artistic luminaries, however, Carlisle was not decorated so much for any specific performances. Instead, she came to embody the very face of art in the United States.

It would be nearly impossible for someone to pack more action into 32 years than Bruce Lee, whose name remains practically synonymous with martial arts excellence and kung-fu movies. He was undoubtedly the forerunner to martial arts stars who came in his wake, including Chuck Norris and Jackie Chan, a feat made all the more impressive by the fact that he grew up as a sickly child. His upbringing was simultaneously one of great privilege and hardship, which had a huge impact on his career down the road.

When Bogart died in 1957, Bacall was still in her 30s, yet from 1957 onward her name scarcely surfaces in popular culture, as though Bacall was simply wiped away with her late husband.

Over the course of a career that spanned several decades and ranged from the stage to movies and television, Shirley MacLaine has been one of the most critically acclaimed actresses in America.

When Robert Redford first entered the national spotlight in the early 1960s, he was hardly viewed as a serious actor, and with his red hair, blond complexion, and athletic build, he was seen more as a handsome man than a skilled one. On top of that, he came at a time in which most Hollywood stars were tall, dark, and slender - like one of his most famous costars, Paul Newman - and by comparison, Redford looked more like a surfer.

By the 1920s English comic Stan Laurel had been in dozens of films, and American Oliver Hardy had appeared in hundreds, but it was not until they formed a duo together in 1926 that they began to be noticed. Once they did, however, Laurel & Hardy became one of the most famous comedy teams in American history, with a career that spanned four decades and included over 100 combined shorts and feature films.

Although she came of age in an era when Hollywood studios were looking for blonde bombshells like Marilyn Monroe, and she followed that path to instant stardom, Jayne Mansfield had one of the most unique Hollywood careers in the 1950s and 1960s.

Mae West will always be remembered as one of Hollywood's biggest icons, and the American Film Institute named her the 15th greatest actress of the 20th century in its Top 100 list, but she also transcended the entertainment industry and became a critical part of Americana itself. Over the course of 7 decades, Mae redefined the boundaries of sexuality in ways that made more conservative Americans of the early 20th century uncomfortable, and for good measure she did so boldly and in people's faces.

One of the more well-known Mel Brooks quips is his statement, in reference to his birth, that "we were so poor, my mother couldn't afford to have me; the lady next door gave birth to me." While obviously fabricated, the story is worthy of note, as it illustrates Brooks' self-deprecatory Jewish humor and his way of transforming a childhood of deep adversity into fodder for comedy.

Hollywood has never had a shortage of actors who thrived in one genre, whether it was John Wayne in Westerns or James Cagney in gangster films, but few had success across the entire spectrum like Gary Cooper, who managed to earn five Academy Award nominations despite an untimely death that cut short his career. Those nominations came for comedies, Westerns, and dramas, with wins for High Noon and the World War I film Sergeant York.

When the American Film Institute ranked its top 50 screen legends of the 20th century, many of the people named had careers spanning several decades, but one of them managed the feat despite living less than three decades. Ranked as the 22nd greatest actress of the 20th century, Jean Harlow was on the screen for less than 10 years, but in that time the "blonde bombshell" became the most popular actress of the 1930s. The platinum blonde was a leading lady for just five years before her premature death of renal failure at just 26 years old.

Rita Hayworth's life and career remain fascinating to both the general public and avid movie fans alike. Even people with just a casual interest in movies appreciate her performances in films such as Gilda (1946), The Lady from Shanghai (1947), and Salome (1953), and few actresses could rival Hayworth's popularity during the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Americans have always loved movie stars, and there have been no shortage of Hollywood icons, but one man has long been considered the greatest male star. From the time he first became a leading man, Humphrey Bogart's screen image has resonated with viewers more than perhaps any other actor.

In the 1920s, the burgeoning movie industry was starting to come into its own. Alongside actor and director Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton was at the peak of Hollywood. It’s no surprise that Keaton was so effective in silent films. He had been practicing comedy in his family’s vaudeville acts as “The Little Boy Who Can’t Be Damaged”, and became a popular performer by the age of 5.

Few actresses have ever gotten the kind of career start that Natalie Wood did during the 1950s. After appearing in film and on TV as a child, Wood broke out by appearing in the classic Rebel Without a Cause alongside James Dean in 1955, despite the fact she was still just 15 years old. She earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for that role, one of three Academy Award nominations she would rack up before the age of 25. Altogether, she was in over 50 films.

Marlon Brando. Few names in the acting profession evoke such a strong, almost visceral reaction. Over the course of his long, prolific career, he was considered perhaps the greatest actor of the 20th century, as well as one of the most complicated and misunderstood. Uniquely able to be both emotionally charged and technically constrained in the same performance, he single-handedly changed the direction of not only the American style of acting.

In the 1960s and 1970s, no actor personified cool, calm and collected like Steve McQueen, whose suave anti-hero protagonists made men jealous and women swoon. As actor Donald Logue puts it in The Tao of Steve, "Steve is the prototypical cool American male. He's the guy on his horse, the guy alone. He has his own code of honor, his own code of ethics, his own rules of living. He never, ever tries to impress the women, but he always gets the girl."

In the 1940s, there were few actors who personified the all-American look like Burt Lancaster, who set Hollywood ablaze quickly with performances in movies like The Killers, The Flame and the Arrow, and The Crimson Pirate. Indeed, his status as a heartthrob was cemented by 1953's From Here to Eternity, when he and Deborah Kerr shot a romantic scene on a Hawaiian beach that ensured the film's inclusion in the American Film Institute's Top 100 Romantic Films of the 20th century.

As it turned out, however, that was just the first phase in a critically acclaimed career that would span over 40 years. As Lancaster grew older, he wisely veered away from the early kinds of roles he had as a leading man and branched out into more distinguished roles that were also more challenging, earning him brand new levels of acclaim. In time, he would go on to be nominated for four Academy Awards for Best Actor, including a win for Elmer Gantry (1960) when he was in his late 40s. By the time he was finished, the American Film Institute named him 19th on its list of the 50 best actors of the 20th century.

The leading men of the 1940s and ‘50s ably represented the visual and cultural expectations of those decades in their iconic films. Some were handsome and glib with quasi-classical dialogue, some could sing, and a few could dance, while others brought an imposing athletic presence to thrillers, westerns, and urban crime dramas.